Sunday, 22 January 2017

Welcome all to 2017 and sorry for the delay in blog posts this month. The reason is because I have been unwell and still working to trace the cause of it. Anyway, I am back and looking forward to a great 2017.

I kicked off 2017 with a number of updates to my AmigaOne X1000, and the return of my repaired main (now backup) X1000!

To start with, I installed the recently released AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1 (released on December 31st 2016). Here is the installation drawer of the expanded archive downloaded from Hyperion's secure area of their website (for registered AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition owners). It is a free download:

I was interested in what changes have been made in this release, so I have taken a few screenshots from the changelog (in AmigaGuide format) to show what has changed for those curious - there are plenty of changes:

Lha is now included in the OS, with some fixes to dos.library:

More bugfixes to amigaguide.library:

Some enhancements to the Shell:

More bug fixes, including a fix for the well known right click context menu new text file crash bug which has been around a long time:

Next sets are all bug fixes:

One exciting new change is the extension of Zorro 3 memory as system memory. This is VERY exciting development for Classic Amiga owners running AmigaOS4.1 Final Edition under PPC, and also those running it under Emulation.

Now the system is apparently no longer limited to the PPC onboard 128MB/256MB maximum limits which should make the system a lot more usable under emulation:

The next set of updates are graphics subsystem related:

These updates are bug fixes:

Locales have been updated with new language support for Czech, Dutch and Finnish:

MUI 5 is now included in AmigaOS4.1 Final Edition Update 1:

Significant updates for the minigl.library and mglut.library:

There are a number of other bug fixes but I will gloss over them for the sake of brevity:

There are some new features in Warp3D as well:

With that read through (whew), I then backed up my system drive to my backup partition, using Deniil 715's BackUp utility:

With the backup done, I then pressed on with the installation, which needed Python to be updated first:

The installation of Update 1 then gets underway.

There is a new boot loader that is installed a part of the update for AmigaOne X1000 machines. For most people amigaboot.of should be in SYS:, but if you have put it on the CF card or elsewhere then please make sure you update that location before rebooting with the updated amigaboot.of.

As I have the AmigaOS SDK installed on my system, I checked the box to install the update for the SDK also.

The install then gets underway:

When completed it prompts to reboot, which you need to do at this point:

It also mentions to run FixFonts after rebooting, which I did:

Here is my AmigaOS4.1 Final Edition Update 1 Workbench after the update has been applied:

It is truly great to see ongoing improvements and enhancements to AmigaOS in 2017!

While I was in an updating mood, I also updated QT4.7, which has also been recently updated:

The README.amigaos4.txt explains the changes, which now requires AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition minimum to run:

This update to QT4.7 now supports Update 1, so you need to install this QT 4.7 update from os4depot asap to avoid issues with QT applications:

The installation is straightforward:

It picks up that I already have QT4.7 installed and offers to update it:

I choose to update and the installer gets down to work:

At the end I need to reboot the system:

With the updated QT4.7, the applications continue to work well under AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1:

One change I noticed with the new QT Prefs is the use of the graphics library and compositing rather than ignoring the AmigaOS, which is great to see:

I tested the updated SMTube, checking out the newest AmigaOne X5000 unboxing video:

Here is the famous Australia Day Eat Lamb advertisement running through SMTube, streaming nicely from the internet:

I also checked out some other update QT apps - qOrganizer and JuffEd:

Andy "Broadblues" Broad also released an updated AOrganiser application for free download from os4depot.net:

I also updated A-EON's Enhancer package to the 1.2 updated version (available as a free download on AMIStore for owners of Enhancer), which includes a number of updates and enhancements to the software included in it, and a new calendar application.

With the recent release of Viva Amiga movie for download on Vimeo, I thought I should watch it on the AmigaOne X1000 - it worked perfectly and I enjoyed watching this new movie about the Amiga - you see the new Calendar and updated Clock from the Enhancer 1.2 update in this shot also:

Some other exciting news this month has been the return last week of my main X1000 board from AmigaKit, now repaired!

The system failed back in March 2016, and it was a replacement system for the original X1000 I had which also failed in 2015 (different fault). After doing remote troubleshooting of the issue, I sent this board to AmigaKit in June 2016 for repair under warranty, as it was less than a year old from when I got it.

Unlike the first board though, this problem was fixable by Varisys, after they confirmed the issue was some bad solder joints on the memory area that caused it to fail. After some repairs it was working again and I got it back.

I brought out my original X1000 case, ready to re-install the board back in:

Here is the board, back in place and ready for power on:

I am very pleased to say it fired up first time and booted as normal!

I tested it booting with a CD first:

The older hard disk in this X1000 needed an updated amigaboot.of file installed because it still had AmigaOS4.1.6 installed on it. I rectified this and then could boot AmigaOS Final Edition:

Here is my now working (older build) X1000, now officially consigned to be a backup system:

I am very glad to have my backup X1000 system again.

Moving back to my main X1000 system, I joined the many other people playing around with the new Cow3D program on Aminet, which uses some Warp3D Nova (From Enhancer software bundle by A-EON) to show some new Warp3D functions under AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1:

I also added a UPS this week to protect my X1000 from any future power spikes, surges or whatnot. Given the X1000 is no longer made, I want to protect it as much as possible.

It is exciting that we are only a few weeks into 2017 and already we have seen a lot of updates released for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1! Should be a great year!